The Weeping Country
by SlimJames
Summary: Five years since the fall of Akatsuki and the Land of Rain is torn apart by civil war. When a team of Konoha ninja goes missing, Shikamaru is sent to recover them. But in a country as mysterious at the Rain, what will he and his team find?
1. Chapter 1

_SlimJames is back baby!!! _

_Okay, this is my first Naruto story and one of the ones that I'm going to be working on while I'm plotting the sequel to Avatar: The Last Airbender story,_ **Yes, I am an Animal**; _if you haven't read that one and you like this story, then go and read it start it RIGHT NOW (joking; finish this chapter first, then go read it)!! Anyway; Shikamaru is my favorite character from Naruot and this is a Shikamaru fic, but Shikamaru himself won't be showing up for the first few chapters, so I ask for your paitence. I've got a scene to set first. Reviews are desired, be they good or bad; I like to have feedback from whoever is reading my stories. _

_Anyway, enough boring stuff; on with the show. _

**Chapter 1**

_The sun doesn't rise…_

The rain; always the accursed rain.

The rain was still pounding down hard, hitting the glassy surface of the swamp water, triggering millions of teeny tiny explosions and ripples that turned the murky surface of the tepid water into an angry churning mass. A thick mist hung in every direction, sitting just above the surface of the water. Slung about the roots of the giant Mangrove trees which ruled this humid, swampy abyss; the pungent mist stank of earth and rot and corpses.

From beneath the shelter offered by the massive roots of one of the mighty trees of the mangal, Kurita Nonoka, Chunin of Kusagakure- the Village Hidden in the Grass- looked out upon her surroundings with a paranoid eye. But at the moment, Nonoka was no shinobi. She wasn't even a human being; she was nothing but a mouse; a terrified little creature cowering in the safety of her den, scared to death of the mysteries and dangers of the world outside.

The teenager, in her relatively short shinobi career, had once been on a mission to the Land of Water. On the return trip, she and her team had skirted the very edges of the Village Hidden in the Mist; in her opinion, this place could give the infamous white abyss of Kirigakure some serious competition.

The pained sound of labored coughing and retching brought the freshly minted Chunin's eyes away from the wall of white nothingness and back around to the man she had been standing vigil over; her squad-leader, Honda Ryota.

"Sir, you're awake! Are you all right?"

She rushed to her captain's side, unrestrained relief evident in her voice. She had been scared that he wouldn't regain consciousness; that she would be left all alone in this place. Nonoka elevated his head and gave him a sip out of her canteen and watched as her wounded commander's bleary eyes gradually focused in on her face.

"Nonoka…chan," Honda managed to choke out through his injured body. A splitting pain in his abdomen was making it a struggle to breathe or talk.

"Easy Honda-taichou; you've just woke up. Here, let me help you sit up. Get your bearings straight."

The Kusa Jonin clutched at his side as Nonoka eased his body up into a sitting position. He took a quick look at their surroundings. The faces of his other subordinates, faces that were supposed to be there with him, awaiting his instructions, weren't.

"…Are we… all that's left?"

The young chunin's shoulders slumped and for the first time her captain noticed just how beat up she was. One side of her normally cherubic face was an ugly purple mass of bruises; shallow cuts marred her hands and neck. She was absolutely filthy, covered in inky black mud from tip to toe and she was stripped down to her black undershirt. Her field vest, the one she had been so proud of receiving upon making Chunin half a year ago, was nowhere in sight.

"Where is everybody else," Honda asked again, biting down the pain and forcing out the entire sentence without a pause.

The Jonin's question was again met with silence. He looked up at his subordinate, but she refused to meet his gaze. She didn't need to tell him anything; the cold feeling in his gut was already telling him everything he needed to know.

'_The mission is scrapped. Our team is dead.' _

"Nonoka, tell me!"

It was no longer voiced as a request but an order. He had to hear this from her.

"Kousuke and Arihama are gone."

"Dead," her captain asked, even though he was pretty sure of what the answer was.

"Arihama, definitely," Nonoka said sadly.

Honda cursed on the inside; Arihama had been a good man and a talented ninja who had a great deal of potential.

"Kousuke though? I dunno… things went really bad _really_ quickly after you got knocked out. He tried to draw the enemy away from us- that's how we first got separated."

"How long has it been since things turned to shit," the captain said after taking a moment to digest the information that Nonoka had just told him.

"Um… three hours, I think," the Chunin replied in a small voice.

Three hours?!?

Honda resisted the urge to cry out in despair. After that much time, it was safe to assume that Kousuke was either A) dead or B) beating his feet back to the Demilitarized Zone as fast as he could.

Kousuke had been the one who had been tasked with carrying The Goods and if he _had_ managed to elude his pursuers his _first_ priority would be to make sure that The Goods got delivered back to friendly lines. Abandoning duty to rescue fallen comrades- while heroic- went against the core principle of the shinobi profession; the mission always comes first.

What that meant was that, regardless of whether Kousuke had fallen victim to option A or managed to escape to pursue option B, he and Nonoka were stuck on their own, hundreds of miles outside of the Safe Zone. They had no idea where their enemies were and their fighting ability had been ground down to almost nothing. As far as disasters went, this one was pretty complete.

The Jonin doubled over as he was wracked by a round of coughs, spitting up a mouthful of blood.

"Honda-taichou," Nonoka said in alarm.

"M'fine," the squad leader mumbled, wiping the blood dribbling from his lips as he struggled to gain his breath.

It was becoming increasingly apparent that he in absolutely no condition to do anything that even resembled fighting. Should their phantom assailants find their hiding place, their only defense would be Nonoka- who wasn't looking very spry at the moment.

The Jonin sighed wearily.

Regardless of how poor the situation looked, he was still the leader of this squad and he still had a responsibility to its surviving member to lead them through this crisis.

"Nonoka-chan… help me up. I need to see outside."

Throwing his arm around her shoulders, Nonoka gently hoisted her captain to his feet. Together, the two wounded Grass shinobi struggled across to the edge of the gigantic mangrove's massive roots and peered out into the curtain of impenetrable mist and driving rain.

"Quite the view, huh," the chunin joked sarcastically. Honda smiled, even though it had been a pretty lame joke.

Their situation was no laughing matter however. The two of them had to come up with something quick or else they were as good as dead.

"Wait, what is that?"

Honda's head snapped up and began scanning the surroundings.

"You see something," he asked urgently.

Maybe it was nothing, maybe his subordinate had just been mistaken, or she thought that she had seen something that really wasn't there.

"Over there, by that felled tree; look down and to the left," she said, pointing her finger to guide her captain's eyes in the right direction.

"You see that dark shape? I'm pretty sure that it wasn't there the last time I was scanning the area."

Honda focused his vision in on the area that Nonoka indicated. He squinted and tried to make out what it was that she had seen. After a few tense seconds of searching, the Grass Jonin saw that there did in fact appear to be an oddly shaped black mass sitting beneath the carcass of a mangrove. For what must have been the thousandth time that day, Honda cursed this country's abysmal weather; the rain was coming down too hard for him to determine if what he was looking at was a human, an animal, a piece of vegetation or million other things other than an enemy ninja.

Though the Jonin's vision was impaired by the weather, Honda's ability to sense chakra was still as acute as ever. Seemingly arising out of nowhere, he felt a massive spike in chakra from somewhere out in the mist; his brain had around two seconds to register just how massive a jutsu powered by that much chakra would be before an enormous wall of water came rushing right at the two Grass shinobi.

Years of training and experience on a dozen different battlefields took hold of the Jonin as he forced his battered body to snap into action. They had only seconds before instant death came crashing into them. Enveloping his much smaller subordinate into a bear hug, Honda Ryota forced out all of the remaining chakra still in his body for one last, desparate, jutsu.

**Doton: Iron Shell**

'_Please, let one of us survive…'_

* * *

"Heh, heh, heh. Splash two invaders; man I am _on fire_ today!"

Four figures approached the tangled and splintered roots of the mangrove tree where the two surviving trespassers onto their territory had been taking refuge. The mangrove tree listed slightly after the abuse that had been committed against its roots but still stood tall; the sturdy beasts of the Great Salt Marsh weren't going to be toppled by an attack of that magnitude.

The group of four approached the scene of destruction at a leisurely pace, leaving a small trail of ripples in their wake as they treaded across the water's surface. The tallest of the group, a young man sporting one of the odd breathing apparatus' favored by some shinobi hailing from Amegakure- the Hidden Rain Village- was talking and gesticulating wildly, reveling in his own powers of indiscriminate destruction.

"Oh will you shut up already Ichi-kun," the one of the two females in the group snapped.

The girl looked to be in her mid teens with long, flaxen hair and carrying a parasol to protect her head from the pouring rain.

"So you managed to splash to enemies who, by the way, were already half-dead with an unnecessarily big and showy technique. Big whoop!"

"Damn straight it's a big whoop Shigure-chan," the irrepressible Ichi replied arrogantly, effectively combating the girl's sarcasm with the power of pure douche.

"You think _you_ could pull off a super effective, mega-pwnage jutsu like that? Please! Just stand someplace and try to look pretty. Leave the real fighting to the rest of us."

Shigure simply rolled her eyes at her childish teammate. Ichi had always been a tool, but ever since he had gotten that stupid seal he had been especially insufferable. That power boost it gave him seriously went to his head.

"Oh yeah, you're a _real killer_ Ichi… jackass."

"I'm just saying; two for one! I would think some congratulations were in order. People still do that, right? Congratulate their teammates for a job well done, I mean."

A cold, authoritative voice cut off the conversation before it could escalate any further.

"You only got one."

Shigure and Ichi looked back at their two trailing teammates. The other Kunoichi of their cell, the deathly pale Okoi, and the unofficial leader of their unit, Nanashi, were sharing the space beneath Nanashi's large red-iron umbrella. The pair was peering off into the mist away from the mangrove where the two enemy shinobi had been taking refuge.

"What the hell do you mean I only got one," Ichi demanded, personally insulted by the suggestion that one of his jutsu could do anything less than kill everything in its path.

"There were two chakra signatures hiding in the roots of that tree. There was one left after you finished making a mess out of everything," Nanashi replied matter-of-factly.

"Bullshit," Ichi snorted while waving his hand dismissively, "I got'em both."

Ever so slowly, Nanashi turned his head, directing his vision away from the retreating point in the mist to his hotheaded teammate. The taller boy felt himself flinch involuntarily as his eyes automatically flew to the two grotesque tears in the other young man's face. At some point in the past, someone had cut open Nanashi's cheeks, extending the ends of his mouth by almost an inch on each side. Disturbingly, he had never allowed his disfigurement to be repaired, instead opting to use a pair of piercings to secure the skin in place and keep his face from coming apart. Though he was good at hiding it, Ichi was little bit afraid of Nanashi.

"No. You didn't. This might be hard for you to accept, but you're not as good as you think you are," Nanashi replied evenly.

Ichi felt his temper flaring; Nanashi unsettled him- the little creep always had- but he'd be damned if he'd let anybody belittle his power.

Not after all he had sacrificed to obtain it.

Ichi walked aggressively to where Nanashi and Okoi still stood under the umbrella

"You want to see how good I am you little wimp!?"

The shorter male rolled his eyes; he could kill the blowhard a dozen different ways, but murdering one of your own teammates- no matter how tempting it may be- was behavior unbecoming of a shinobi. Closing his umbrella, Nanashi turned on his heel and walked began walking in the other direction.

"Okoi, calm this idiot down," he called out over his shoulder.

"And where are you going," she asked.

"…To take care of the loose end."

* * *

Nonoka was running for her life; the knowledge of what she was doing made her sick with shame. This was different from a retreat or a tactical withdrawal- she was honestly running for her life. She had no plan of what to do now, and she wasn't running to a specific destination. She was running because she was panicking and couldn't think of anything else other than running _away_.

Her captain- her friend- had just died to save her life, shielding her body with his own. Her chest heaved painfully the air was sapped from her chest through the twin exertions of running and crying. It was a miracle that she was even able to keep her legs moving.

All of her muscles burned as Nonoka struggled to pump more chakra into her damaged body, urging it desperately to go faster- to give her more than it already was. If she was too slow, if she slowed down, if she stopped to rest, it would be over.

She would be dead, just like the rest of them.

The Grass chunin pushed herself even harder, darting across pools of brackish water and hopping over felled trees as if they were twigs. If she could just get out of this goddamn swamp; if she could make it to one of the main highways; if, if, if, if! So many if's! But ifs were all she had right now and whether or not she managed to reach safety depended entirely on an if.

Landing on the half-submerged root of a mangrove, Nonoka crouched and gathered as much of her dwindling chakra as she could into her legs and with a tremendous effort, propelled herself upwards.

Just as she passed the apex of her jump and was beginning her descent, a single kunai came speeding out of the mists and pierced the Grass chunin through her calf.

A scream tore its way from Nonoka's ragged lungs as the murky water and twisted roots below her rushed up at her. Unable to land properly on her hobbled leg, she landed hard and felt one of her ankle shatter beneath her weight.

She screamed again; louder. It was a scream of pain and frustration and anger and fear and at the horrific knowledge that her young life was about to come to an end. Her tears came unabated; she didn't it to end this way. It couldn't end this way.

"You're all the same," a sinister voice from nowhere in particular said.

"You think that you can use our country to fight your battles and play games with our lives. But when one of us turns the tables on you, you want to cry."

She heard him coming towards her, and looked up. From her position on her knees, Nonoka saw a young man around her own age, with ugly scars on his face and pure hatred in his eyes. He wore the forehead protector of Amegakure slung around his throat with a single scratch disfiguring the Rain symbol.

Wordlessly, he drew a blade from the hilt of the red-iron umbrella he carried in his hand and raised it over his head. She watched, paralyzed in dispair as her killer drove the point of the blade into the space between her breasts; she was too exhausted to even cry out.

From her place on the ground the Grass chunin idly watched as her life's blood steadily flowed out of her body, only to be washed away by the endlessly driving rain. With the last of her strength, she looked up at her killer and asked the question that had been on her mind since her team came to this accursed country.

"…Tell me… does it ever stop raining here?"

"……This isn't rain. These are tears."

* * *

"…Konohamaru, wake up!"

"Huh," Sarutobi Konohamaru, chunin of the Hidden Leaf Village and grandson of the late Sandaime Hokage, snapped back into reality.

"Dude," Udon said, pushing his glasses farther up onto his nose.

"I said that it's time to get back on the road. Moegi's already outside; let's not keep her waiting."

Pushing himself off of the bench, the simian ninja and his friend left the protection of the Rest Stop awning and back into the downpour that so frequently afflicted this country.

"Man I am so sick of rain; I can't wait to get home!"


	2. Chapter 2

_Here we are with Chapter 2. I hope you enjoy it!_

**Chapter 2**

_The gang finds a dead body…_

"_This is the campaign slogan/entrailed in the cargo bay…"_

Konohamaru's youthfully raucous voice not so much sang as shouted, the impassioned sound cutting through the pitter and patter of the steadily falling rain.

"…_Neutered is the vastness/hallowed vacuum's/chuck the oxygen tanks!" _

Udon's slightly higher timber chimed in with his own barrage of sung/shouted song lyrics.

"_They hibernate but haven't kissed the ground/pucker up and kiss the asphalt now…"_

The simian ninja cut back, his voice building in intensity and fury before he rounded on the third member of their group who was sharing the bench with them under the awning of the rest stop where they were taking shelter from the downpour. Konohamaru looked at the short kunoichi expectantly, waiting for her to jump in and supply the next few lines of the song. Despite being a full head shorter than her energized teammate, Moegi still somehow managed to look down her nose at him.

Shrinking away from her gaze, Konohamaru shrugged his shoulders and turned back to his other teammate. Udon was more than happy to pick up where the simian nin had left off.

"_Tease this amputation/splintered larynx/it has access now!"_

It was at this point that both young men hopped up onto the bench and broke into a fit of air guitar theatrics, enthusiastically banging their heads and making guitar riff sounds with their mouths. Moegi put saw that they were getting weird looks from the other people loitering around the rest stop; her normally rosy cheeks grew even brighter. The kunoichi put her face in her hands to hide her embarrassment.

"Kami, you guys are so lame," she muttered through her fingers.

"Yeah, this coming from the girl in the green spandex leotard," Udon shot back, though the comment was voiced without rancor.

While Konohamaru laughed heartily, Moegi assumed a haughty look and stuck her nose up in injured pride.

"I'll have you know that Lee-senpai says that these clothes are an essential component in my training. In fact, he credits his bodysuit as the secret of his strength."

Udon scoffed; yeah, it was all in the clothes! And the seven hundred fingertip pushups the guy did every morning had absolutely nothing to do with it. He didn't voice his thoughts and just let his teammate keep right on going as she extolled the virtues of Konoha's Green Beast.

"…I guess I shouldn't expect you guys to understand somebody as complex as Lee-senpai. Don't worry though, I forgive you."

Feeling that she had effectively made her point, the kunoichi lowered her nose and looked at her two companions, a smug expression resting easily on her impish face. Konohamaru and Udon grinned lecherously at their female teammate, causing the smugness to gradually drain out of her expression. Moegi suddenly felt slightly uncomfortable at the way they were eyeing her. It was like they were both in on some joke and were forcing themselves not to laugh at her for being in the dark.

"What," she asked, eyeing the pair warily.

"It's nothing," Udon said- voicing it in such a way that clearly meant that '_it'_ definitely _was_ something.

"No, seriously; what is it."

"Wweelll," Konohamaru said, drawing out the one syllable word for all it was worth.

"It just kind of occurred to us that somebody's hot for teacher."

Moegi's cheeks, always rosy, turned a color that was very near to fuchsia; it was a wonder that she didn't pass out from all of the blood rushing to her head.

"S-sh-shut up," the kunoichi stuttered, her voice a mix of irrational anger and embarrassment- mostly anger.

This type of reaction from the normally unflappable kunoichi was, of course, a source of enormous amusement for the two male members of the team, who proceeded to laugh uproariously at her. Konohamaru and Udon's laughter died abruptly as they saw the look of pure murder in Moegi's eyes.

"Ooookay, let's all just calm down now," Udon said, adjusting his glasses and putting on a disarming look.

All jokes about secret crushes aside, Moegi had gotten monstrously strong since she had been taken under the green wing of the Leaf Village's resident taijutsu virtuoso. She was more than capable of beating them both to death with one of her shinobi sandals, provided that she had the right motivation.

She looked very motivated right now.

The two male shinobi backed away from her. Konohamaru decided to try and use his much vaunted diplomacy skills to defuse the situation.

"Now Moegi, we're all friends here. We had a few laughs, so now let's just…"

The simian shinobi was cut off as the kunoichi belted him across the face with her right hand. After the dust finally settled, there was a vaguely human shaped hole through the back of the rest stop. Cracking her knuckles, Moegi slowly turned her gazed onto the bespectacled member of her team. She found Udon cowering in a corner as she approached to deliver divine punishment down upon his head.

'_Oh. Shit!_'

* * *

Konohamaru, Udon, and Moegi trudged miserably through the muck; the three Konoha chunin were back on the road, traveling on the sludge path that was this region of the Rain country's main highway. They had had to make a quick exit from the rest stop after Moegi's little… outburst. Through the girl's display of abnormal strength, they may as well have declared that they were shinobi; that wasn't a good thing.

Under the peace accords signed by the daimyo and the Kage of the Five Great Shinobi nations the three of them- as Konoha shinobi- were technically not even allowed to cross into the Rain country's borders. After the business with Akatsuki a few years ago, nearly the entire country had been declared off limits to outsiders. Of course it was common knowledge that every one of the major shinobi nations "occasionally" violated the No-Go-Zone provision of the peace accords; still, actually getting _caught_ doing it would result in a major international incident and embarrassment for both the Daimyo and the Kage.

Moegi shuddered at the thought of what would happen to them if anybody found out about their little detour through the Rain country. The official reprimand she could handle, but the paperwork would be absolute murder.

After they had left the rest stop, the rain had gotten worse; what had once been driving could now be described as '_torrential'_. Both Moegi and Udon, from opposite sides of their teammate, shot Konohamaru dirty looks. The simian shinobi could feel their eyes digging into him and sighed, but remained silent; what could he say?

Their current misery _was_ all his fault, after all.

After all three members of the Konohamaru corps had assumed the rank of chunin- and subsequently all of the responsibilities that their new ranks entailed- their team had been broken up as each one of them had been assigned to different duties. It was a fairly uncommon occurrence when the three friends were reunited for a mission. As such it had become a tradition of sorts that when the Konohamaru corps was reunited for a mission, they would make an effort to do something fun together before returning to Konoha.

This time, it had been Konohamaru's turn to pick what they would do. The simian ninja was a massive fan- to the point that he teased his hair out into the shaggy "afro" style sported by most of the band members- of a group called "At the Cinema". He had found out that the group was playing a show at a club in some backwater town in the Grass Country and had insisted that they all go; his teammates had been neutral on the whole idea, but decided that it was worth checking out.

Moegi thought that the performance was alright, but nothing more than alright; it wasn't her type of music and the lyrics- when she could discern them through the high-pitched screeching and guttural growls of the lead vocalist- made no sense to her.

Konohamaru and, surprisingly, Udon had loved it. Unfortunately for the trio, they had unwisely decided to go to the after-show party and, with the enthusiasm inborn in all seventeen-year olds with little experience with alcohol, had all gotten uproariously drunk. They had had to spend an extra day in the Grass Country recovering from the truly epic hangovers they all suffered from.

That extra day had put them behind in the timetable established in their mission parameters. They would be at least two days late if they tried following the usual route back to Konoha.

That was when Konohamaru had a brilliant idea; why not take a shortcut through the Rain Country? They would get back to the village on time and avoid the vicious chewing out that they would receive from their superiors for showing up late. It had seemed like a good idea at the time.

But like so many other things that "seemed like a good idea at the time," reality did not match up with the theory.

Travel through the Land of Rain was dangerous, dirty and wet. Very, _very_, wet. This whole country was in a state of anarchy and the three Konoha chunin were acutely aware of the ever present miasma of paranoia that hung thick in the air. Even battle hardened ninja like themselves would have to watch their steps.

Konohamaru was thankful that the trip so far had been uneventful and- once the rain stopped being such a bitch- they could make a full speed break for the border.

"Hold up a second guys," Udon announced.

"Dude, what is it," Konohamaru asked.

Despite the fact that it had been his idea to cut through the Land of Rain, the simian ninja was in no hurry to spend any more time in this country than he had to.

"I gotta take a leak," the bespectacled shinobi replied matter-of-factly before walking off the road towards the marshy bog lying to their right.

"Why didn't you go back at the rest stop," Konohamaru asked in annoyance.

"Because I didn't have to go then; nature's calling right now!"

"If you pissed yourself, its not like anybody would notice- we're all already soaked down to our bones," Moegi said in exasperation.

Both Konohamaru and Udon looked at her like she had just grown a second head.

"Okay, that's just gross," Konohamaru commented.

"Seriuosly," Udon said, cosigning his friend's statement, "Do you actually do that?"

"How do you not walk around with a constant yeast infection?"

Moegi gave them a flat look.

"….y'know what? Fuck both of you guys."

Shrugging, Udon turned and headed towards the bog. Finding a suitably large bush, he pulled aside his parka and unzipped his fly. The young man gave a long sigh of relief as he felt his overtaxed bladder deflate.

Midway through his Piss of Life the bespectacled ninja noticed with mild surprise that his stream of urine was falling on a person's head. More precisely, it was falling on the head of somebody who was half submerged in a pool of brackish water and black mud. Shaking off and zipping up Udon focused a small amount of chakra to the soles of his feet and stepped onto the pool, his precise control keeping him from sinking down into the muck.

Normally Udon wouldn't have even bothered examining some random corpse he had stumbled across by accident. This was the Land of Rain, after all; with no real government, no army and virtually no police force, people got murdered all the time. What made this particular dead body noteworthy was the fact that the guy, judging by the way he was dressed, was clearly a shinobi. Reaching down and pulling the poor bastard's face out of the muck, Udon used the edge of his parka to wipe the filth away and get a look at his forehead.

'_Kusagakure…'_

Now what was a Grass ninja doing this far outside of his village's sphere of control? Interest piqued, Udon examined the body. It didn't take him long to figure out why the guy had died; somebody had blown holes into him. Grimacing, the chunin stood back up and walked back to the road where his teammates stood shivering in the downpour.

"Guys, you've got to come and see this."

* * *

"They turned a man into a beehive," Konohamaru said hollowly as he stared down at the stripped corpse of the dead Grass ninja.

"I mean, seriously, who does that? These are like actual…_hole_ holes in a human body! That's just like, foul."

"Yup, its pretty messed up," Moegi agreed as she and Udon riffled through the man's clothes.

The trio had pulled the body onto more solid ground and Moegi and Udon had set about picking it clean of anything that looked valuable/important/interesting. Konohamaru, who had always creeped out by the recently deceased, chose to stand back and watch.

"Well, this guy died right here, but I don't think that he was killed right here," Udon said after a while.

"He probably got ventilated somewhere else and then dragged himself to this spot before he finally crapped out."

"Ouch," Konohamaru winced. "So, you find anything cool on that guy?"

"Not in his clothes," Moegi replied, throwing aside the dead ninja's shinobi vest. "Time for the cavity search."

"How long have you been waiting to say that," the simian shinobi quipped.

The kunoichi smiled sweetly, then promptly flipped him off before getting down to the dirty business of searching the corpse. Starting off in his mouth, she ran her fingers through every inch of the orifice. She really hoped that this guy was the type to hide something in his mouth and not shove it up his…

"Found something," Moegi announced as her fingers made contact with something that was jammed in the man's throat; he must have died while in the process of swallowing it.

Udon made his way to the body just as his teammate managed to yank the obstruction out of the corpse's throat. She held it up for him to see; it was a small capsule container. Moegi unscrewed the top. Shielding the contents of the capsule from the rain, the two walked over to where Konohamaru was standing. Huddled together, the trio examined their grisly prize.

"What is it," the bespectacled ninja asked.

"Looks like microfilm," Konohamaru answered.

"No way for us to tell what's on there; we'd need to send it to the cryptologists when we get back to the village."

"So, since we've recovered this possible vital information, does this mean we can ditch this whole low profile stuff and hurry back to Konoha already," the kunoichi asked.

"Yeah, that's probably for the best," Konohamaru answered.

Avoiding detection would have to take a backseat to safety in this situation; that Grass ninja had been killed- they didn't know by who and they didn't know why, but it was a more than safe bet that it had been for what he had been carrying in his throat.

And now the capsule was in their hands.

Whoever had done the killing might still be in the area; all thing considered, it would be a better idea to get out of there quickly. Dropping their civilian facades, the three young chunin tied the symbol of their village onto their heads and leapt into the trees.

* * *

"Well this is just peachy! Now we've got something new to worry about; those damn kids! We should've never left this job up to them."

Chiaki was pissed and was letting her agitation be known. The bitter kunoichi looked towards her companion, letting him know with a glance that this screw up was all his fault. The other ninja sighed; Keisuke had to admit that, in a sense, this failure had been his fault. It had been his decision to allow Nanashi's team to handle the Grass ninja; perhaps it had been a mistake to entrust a mission of such importance to such a young and inexperienced group.

"We need to clear this up," he said.

"Send word to cell four and cell eleven; we can cut them off before they reach the border."

Chiaki nodded; summoning a hawk, the kunoichi sent it skyward with instructions to relay the orders to the appropriate troops. From beneath his hat, Keisuke watched the bird disappear into the distance; the hunt was certainly on now.


	3. Chapter 3

_Nothing to say this time except that finals week sucks balls..._

**Chapter 3**

_Two timing touch…_

"_Achoo!"_

"Bless you," Konohamaru said to Udon while trying to stifle the sniffle that was building in his own nose.

"Thanks," the bespectacled ninja replied. He removed a small blue cloth from one of his pockets and used it to wipe the raindrops off of his glasses.

The three Leaf ninja had been on the move, off and on, for a night and a day; after discovering the fresh corpse of a Kusagakure ninja and taking the object that he had secreted inside of his body, the trio of chunin had unanimously decided to step up the pace of their journey out of the Land of Rain. After dropping their civilian guises, the group had managed to cover a considerable amount of ground. They had cleared the Great Salt Swamp around an hour before and had entered the hilly landscape of the southeastern regions of the Land of Rain.

Small, dreary farms dotted the tops of the many low hills- most were abandoned, their crops overgrown and untended. In the valleys that lay between the hills, acres of rice paddies sat idle and abandoned; in better times they would have been filled with farmers. Whole families should have been hard at work harvesting a bountiful harvest. The vacant landscape stood as a testament to the damage that the constant warfare raging across the country had done to the common people. The vacancy of the land worked in the trio's advantage as they found an abandoned farmhouse where they could rest for a few hours.

While traveling, the trio of chunin would occasionally pass a grim faced farmer still stubbornly trying to eke out a living in the unforgiving landscape or encounter a weary refugee traveling so someplace that offered a bit more safety. All of the natives viewed them with a mixture of fear, anger and outright hatred. That wasn't surprising; it was well known that ninja in general, but especially foreign ones, were less than popular.

"I don't get why you don't just get some contacts," Moegi said from her seat on the kitchen table.

Freed from their usual braids, her long auburn hair hung dankly over her shoulders as she used both of her hands to wring the excess water from it. Udon rolled his eyes and scoffed at her suggestion.

"Are you kidding? These things are part of my iconic look; not to mention a key element to my sexy," he quipped before placing his glasses back onto the bridge of his nose.

"Your... _sexy_," Moegi asked, not quite beleiving that he actually said that out loud.

"Oh yeah, go ahead. Encourage him," Konohamaru said sarcastically.

Udon smirked slyly and waggled his eyebrows suggestively at the kunoichi; she had to stop herself for laughing out loud at him.

"I dare you to say that these things aren't doing it for you! They frame my face perfectly, highlight my superb bone structure and add a certain…class to my overall appearance."

Moegi broke into a fit a giggles. "Y-yeah; I bet you're beating off the women with a stick."

"Oh what, you don't know this guy's motto," Konohamaru asked, interjecting himself into the conversation.

"Apparently he's got, and I quote, '_bitches beyond bitches'_. I mean, I thought that I was the man because I had bitches _upon_ bitches, but Udon just puts me to shame. I bet he could even give Kiba-san a run for his money, in the bitches department that is."

Udon looked at Konohamaru with annoyance. "You're a jerk, you know that."

By this time Moegi was almost doubled over laughing at the two of them; before long, all three of them were laughing. Calming down, the kunoichi turned to Konohamaru.

"So, exactly how far away from the border are we," she asked while rapidly retying her still damp hair into the two long braids which usually hung down her back.

Shooing the girl off of the table top, Konohamaru pulled his map out of a pocket in his chunin vest and spread it out. He began tracing their path through the Land of Rain with his fingers.

"Okay, we were over here in E-9, and then we crossed out of the swamp and ended up…here in E-3. So, we're not that far from the border with Fire. We keep up this pace and provided the weather doesn't turn evil on us, we should be in the clear by tomorrow morning."

The simian shinobi allowed Moegi and Udon a minute to look at the map and familiarize themselves with their route; though they all carried maps of their own each one took the time to imprint their destination in their minds. You could lose a map, but as long as you were alive- and didn't fall prey to any memory jutsu- you wouldn't lose what was in your head.

After a few more minutes of rest Konohamaru hopped up onto his feet and signaled that it was time for them to begin moving out. With identical groans and curses on the monkey ninja's resilience, Udon and Moegi hobbled onto their own feet. Though they were in the prime of their lives and at the peak of physical condition, nearly 24 hours of continuous travel had still taken a lot out of them.

Thank the gods for solider pills.

The trio made their way down the hill on the footpath from the farmhouse towards the main road. Reaching the road, the trio spread themselves out in a standard triangle formation with Moegi taking the point position. The kunoichi casually scanned their surrounding; the driving rain of the previous day had mellowed into a light drizzle and she could see much farther than she had been able to the day before. She didn't spy anything threatening- not that she was expecting to. The only people she could spy anywhere in the area were what looked like a pair of farmers off in the distance.

"Man, I can't wait to get back to a place where the sun actually shines," the kunoichi said, tightening her parka over her head as she spoke.

"It's not as if the sun doesn't shine here," Udon replied.

"_Really_," Moegi replied, her voice absolutely sodden with playful sarcasm. She pointed an index finger towards the sky.

"Because, y'know, I don't believe that I've seen the sun come from behind those clouds since we've been in this crapsack country."

The bespectacled ninja rolled his eyes.

"Be that as it may, it's not possible for it to rain _all_ of the time- otherwise we'd all be underwater right now. It's, like, a law of nature or something."

"Whoa buddy, not so fast there," Konohamaru said, deciding to add his two cents to the discussion.

"Now, I don't claim to know much about your so-called laws of nature, but I know that you can't really believe anything until you see it for yourself."

"…..you can't be serious."

"Oh, I think he is," Moegi quipped over her shoulder.

"Alright, allow me to list the various ways in which that theory of yours is retarded…"

Moegi smiled as she listened in to the exchange between the two boys; they were providing the sole source of entertainment for her at the moment. To be frank, the Land of Rain was a dull, ugly place. From the landscape to the people, everything was listless and grey and dull and depressing and…_blegh_!

At the very edge of her vision the young kunoichi spied someone approaching them. She immediately went on her guard until she was able to better discern the person who was approaching them. It was a frail old woman pulling along a cart filled with what was most likely all of her remaining worldly possessions. Moegi relaxed; noting in the old woman's appearance gave away the hint that she was anything other than what she looked like. This looked to be one of the times that the shinobi's inborn paranoia was baseless.

The kunoichi was about to jump back into her teammate's heated conversation about nothing when she took a second look at the old woman's face. The old timer wore the same hate-filled expression that most residents of the Land of Rain gave to foreigners but the intensity of that expression made the hairs on the back of Moegi's neck stand on end. Now that the old woman was close enough for her to give a proper once-over, the kunoichi found herself becoming increasingly uneasy.

She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was just something off about the old hag. Her body language was just…

'_Oh, shit!_'

"SCATTER!"

* * *

**KA-**_**THOOM!!!**_

Konohamaru felt the heat and concussion from the explosion pass over his back as he lay face down in the muddy road. The telltale whizzing sound of flying metal coming from over his head told the young chunin that the maker of that booby trap had taken the time to add a little something extra to the blast. Though the world in front of his eyes was a blurry soup of disjointed colors and nebulous shapes, Konohamaru's mind immediately began processing information, the shot of adrenaline from his near death experience pushing his thought processes into overdrive.

Though not completely back in his right senses, the simian shinobi quickly hopped up to his feet; a quick scan of the area revealed that while Udon was up on his feet Moegi, the one who had alerted them to the danger, had been thrown by the explosion as lay bleeding and motionless near the crater made by the explosion. In the space of a second the two sprang into action. Udon- the only one of the three who had any kind of medical knowledge- rushed over to their fallen teammate while Konohamaru forced his scrambled senses to settle themselves and clapped his hands into the Rooster seal.

"Udon, mark me!"

At best they had a few seconds before the bastards who set the bomb sprang the second part of their ambush. And since they were in a rice paddy…

'_**Raiton: Lightning Clone' **_

The Sandaime's grandson felt every hair on his body stand on end as electrical energy coated the outside of his body before splitting away to form three Konohamaru shaped lightning copies. The young chunin had just finished forming his clones when, as expected, the tranquil waters of the rice paddies on each side of the road erupted as enemy shinobi emerged from their hiding places in the water. Halfway through her ascent one of the enemy ninja found herself nose to nose with the Leaf ninja's crackling doppelganger.

She had just enough time to blurt out a surprised '_wha?_' before 50,000 volts of electricity ripped through her body in a blinding flash of light, turning the kunoichi into a flying, smoking corpse. Using the cover of the flash Konohamaru sent his two remaining clones to cover Udon and Moegi before slipping on his trench knives. The simian shinobi ran straight at the enemies that were in front of him, intending to force open a path out of this trap before its jaws could close all the way. The only way they were getting out of this ambush was if they took advantage of this slim moment of opportunity.

Pumping more of his elemental chakra into his weapons, Konohamaru was able to catch one of his mysterious enemies flat-footed. Whether the man was still disoriented by the flash from Konohamaru's clone or just unprepared for an immediate counterattack, he was completely unprepared when the young chunin suddenly appeared inside of his guard in a burst of speed. Rearing back his right hand Konohamaru sent an electrically charged strike towards his enemy's torso.

Reacting quickly, the Rain shinobi tried to spin out of the way but was still caught by the simian ninja's strike in his side. As the black blade of the trench knife cut into the Rain ninja's side, Konohamaru released a controlled burst of elemental chakra through the weapon sending a surge of electricity through the man's body and violently ripping his body almost in half in an explosion of blood and gore. The young chunin briefly paused in his rush to turn on the other enemy shinobi and tried not to think about the greasy film that covered half of his body.

He bared his teeth in an unhinged smile; they visibly flinched.

His last killing had been unnecessarily powerful and needlessly sadistic, which was the whole point. It was one of the first lessons that Ebisu-sensei had taught them; when you were faced with a superior force and have no means of retreating quietly, attack with as much fanfare and brutality as possible. No matter how hardened the enemy, a single, sudden moment of extreme violence would give anyone pause. That hesitation was what Konohamaru had been counting on.

"BREAK," he yelled, though he really needn't have bothered as Udon- with Moegi slung over his shoulder- had been watching and was already through the hole that his friend had punched through the ambusher's perimeter.

"AFTER THEM," an irate Rain ninja- presumably the leader of this little group- called out behind them.

Konohamaru followed behind him, trailing his two teammates by a few feet. He could hear the telltale splashes of the pursuing ninja as their feet made contact with the watery surfaces of the rice paddies. The young chunin chanced a look over his shoulder and cursed; the six remaining enemy shinobi were right on their tails, fanning out. They were probably going to try to encircle them.

He had to do something quick.

"You two keep going, I'll buy you a few seconds!"

"We'll meet you at E-5," the bespectacled ninja barked over his shoulder.

Moving his hands through the appropriate seals despite the obstruction provided by his trench knives, Konohamaru fell back onto one of his oldest standby techniques.

'_**Shadow Clone Jutsu'**_

In identical puffs of smoke, two identical copies of the simian ninja came into existence beside the running Leaf ninja. Coming to a skidding stop, atop one of the many raised paths that criss-crossed the valley of rice paddies, the three Konohamaru's came together back to back. Forming the Ox seal, the three inhaled a deep breath of air before expelling dragon shaped blasts of fire from their mouths into the surrounding rice paddies.

The flames, upon making contact with the water, immediately converted the pools into voluminous clouds of steam, covering a sizable area in a burning white mist. The pursuing Rain ninja were thrown into confusion as their view was suddenly obscured by the billowing clouds of steam. By the time someone had the idea to dispel the steam using a wind jutsu, none of their prey was anywhere in sight.

* * *

"What the hell happened here?!"

Keisuke rubbed his temples in frustration as he watched the scene unfolding in front of him. The teams that they had sent out to eliminate the trio of foreign ninja had failed miserably in their task; Chiaki had been chewing them out for the last twenty minutes. While he shared her anger, Keisuke didn't see how berating their subordinates for more than five minutes would help the situation. Besides, two of their comrades were dead; they were demoralized enough already without her heaping abuse on them.

"One simple task! We gave you one simple task and you screw it up!"

Tuning his raging partner out- there really was no stopping the raven haired kunoichi when she was on a roll- the Loyalist ninja instead concentrated on what they had learned from the situation. The three foreign ninja were confirmed to be from Konoha; that was a definite problem. The Leaf village, despite the non-militant stance of their Kage, was not an enemy that he looked forward to facing. Plus, they were not the type of village to abandon a team just for the sake of saving political face with the other nations.

It didn't matter if the Land of Rain was a no-go-zone; if one of their units didn't come back, there _would_ be a recovery and rescue mission launched.

Then, of course, there was the more immediate issue of the three escapees. He and Chiaki had brought reinforcements and had laid a pretty heavy dragnet over the entire area. The Leaf ninja were still carrying the goods that they had taken from the Grass ninja; and though they didn't have the means to actually view what was on the microfilm, they might have the means to send it back to their village; and that would open up a whole new host of problems.

But it wasn't as if their Loyalist forces could operate in this area with impunity; this region was still being contested between them and the RGA. The Redeemers would know something was up once they saw such in upsurge in Loyalist presence in this area and would undoubtedly start sniffing around. The gods only knew what would happen if _they_ got to the Konoha ninja first.

"Chiaki," he called, interrupting her in the middle of her latest harangue.

"We're done here. Select a few teams to keep up the search in this area; their primary objective is to locate and eliminate the Leaf ninja but they should keep a lookout for RGA. Any Redeemers show up, you go to ground. We don't need any unneeded attention."

Keisuke sighed; this situation had to be handled delicately.

* * *

Udon looked down at the still unconscious Moegi; she was pale and her breathing was shallow. He wasn't much of a medic, but the bespectacled ninja knew enough to know that she wasn't going to be back at 100% for a while.

After Konohamaru's distraction he had managed to get himself and Moegi to the relative safety of one of the many abandoned hamlets that dotted this part of the Land of Rain. Konohamaru had yet to turn up as well. Fishing the goods out of his pocket, Udon bit into his thumb until he drew blood. Smearing it onto his palm, the young chunin performed a summoning jutsu.

Emerging from a puff of smoke, a rabbit dressed in shinobi garb and sporting a Konoha headband looked up at him.

"You've looked better Udon," the furry creature remarked.

"I've felt better," Udon replied. He handed the goods to the rabbit who stashed the small capsule in a pack slung across his hip.

"I need you to get this back to Konoha as fast as you can; me and Moegi will try to stay in this sector, but no guarantees that we'll still be here in E-5 by the time the rescue mission gets here."

"I hear ya," the rabbit replied curtly before heading to the door.

Udon watched him go before turning around and sitting down next to his wounded teammate.

Outside, the rain picked up.

* * *

_Five Days Later, Konoha…_

A contented sigh slipped through the lips of the young man who lay basking in the sun on the concrete rooftop of a nondescript apartment building on the west side of the village. Nara Shikamaru stretched and cracked his back, enjoying the feeling of the warm rays of the sun beaming down on his face. The only thing that could make this moment more relaxing was if Temari and her breasts were here for him to nuzzle between.

Turning his thoughts away from the Sand kunoichi- it would only make him frustrated and he was here to relax- refocused on contemplating the cloud formations drifting overhead. Shikamaru relished these precious few moments that he got to take some down time away from his duties. A Jonin of more than modest prominence amongst the shinobi forces of the Leaf village, Shikamaru had had many responsibilities foisted upon him that occupied much of the time that, in years past, he had spent idly laying on his back and watching the clouds go by. Unfortunately his relaxation time was being spoiled by the presence of somebody standing at the edge of the roof.

That was all they were doing; standing there and watching him. The Jonin didn't sense a hint of killing intent coming from the person so he was pretty sure that he wasn't in any immediate danger. They seemed to be waiting for Shikamaru to get up on his own; they obviously didn't know him very well. Still, the presence of an unseen onlooker was seriously disrupting the serenity of the cloud watching experience.

Reluctantly, the Jonin sat up and looked grumpily at the interloper.

"What is it," he asked; annoyance plain in his voice.

The mousy kunoichi that was standing at the edge of the roof squeaked and shrank away slightly. Shikamaru felt a twinge of guilt mixed into his annoyance; he hadn't meant to sound harsh.

"Um, you have an urgent message from the Hokage; you have orders to report to his office as soon as possible."

The shadow user huffed. "You know that I'm supposed to be on leave now, right?"

"I know, but Hokage-sama asked for you specifically."

Shikamaru quirked an eyebrow at that information; he wasn't exactly the Hokage's favorite person so for that fool to ask for him specifically must mean that the situation was pretty serious.

"I guess I've got no choice then…"


	4. Chapter 4

_What's up world? The fall semester is finally over so- in between dealing with family and trying to get laid while I'm at home for the holidays- I'll have a lot more time to write; HOORAY for ME! Anyway, here's a new chapters. _

_P.S. Thanks to everybody who has left a review, you guys are the balls!_

**Chapter 4**

_The right man for the job_…

Just about everyone who knew Nara Shikamaru, from his colleagues to certain members of his extended family, reckoned him to be a patient man. Relatively few people- his father, his best friend, his second-best friend and his on again/off again girlfriend- knew that this wasn't _exactly_ the case. Shikamaru had no problem waiting; it's just that that waiting had to have a purpose to it. He hated feeling like his time was being wasted.

Right at that moment, the shadow-user felt like that.

Upon receiving the urgent summons to the Hokage tower from the hapless messenger Shikamaru had- reluctantly- made his way to the monolithic building with all haste. Reaching the tower, he hurried up to the Kage's top floor office where he was unceremoniously stopped in his tracks at the door by the sunken-eyed secretary occupying the desk where Shizune once spent so much of her time. Grumbling in annoyance when he was told take a seat and wait until the Hokage asked for him, Shikamaru picked a chair and slouched down in it.

The shadow user crossed his arms across his chest and attempted to avoid the thought that the village leader was just making him wait in order to get on his nerves; that degree of casual pettiness wasn't typically in that idiot's character. But on the other hand Shikamaru wasn't exactly one of the Hokage's favorite people, and the feeling was _very_ mutual. Abandoning that troublesome train of thought, the Jonin instead decided to kill some time by indulging in his third favorite game; watching people.

Straightening up in his seat, the young shinobi began scanning the bustling office space for a likely victim. After around half a minute of scoping out prospects, the young Jonin settled his eyes on a young couple- one of the male civilian staff and a kunoichi- who were chatting over by the water cooler. They were too far away for him to hear what they were saying over the general office noise and he purposely avoided reading their lips. Shikamaru started off by examining their body language; the girl's posture suggested that she was the aggressor in this situation. She was bent forward slightly and had an enthusiastic look on her face; he noticed how she kept edging closer him.

The male was the exact opposite; while the kunoichi was trying to edge forward, he appeared to be trying to edge away. It was subtle, but Shikamaru was able to pick up a sense of…nervousness?

No, no; it was more like apprehension. Now what would be the source of that?

Focusing in harder onto the younger man, Shikamaru ran his eyes over his face. The shadow user's sharp eyes noted the tenseness in his jaw, the way his eyebrows fidgeted across his forehead. That pathetically uncomfortable smile plastered across his face said it all; that was the face of a man who wished to be somewhere else. The young Jonin flicked his eyes towards the kunoichi; the flush to her cheeks _also_ said it all.

Shikamaru smirked. _'Looks like somebody has a crush…'_

Unfortunately for the girl, he didn't seem to be that into her judging by the way he was trying to pull away from her without being too obvious about it. Plus, the young civilian kept sending furtive glances towards someone over her shoulder. Curiosity piqued, Shikamaru leaned over in his seat and tried to see where the man was sending those looks. From his vantage point the Jonin could see a mass of assorted office staff, a mix of civilians and shinobi. Amongst the mass of anonymous faces one stood out due to the sheer amount of agitation that was radiating from it.

One of the shinobi staffers- one of the _male_ staffers- was glaring holes through the girl. Well that was certainly interesting.

"Nara-san."

The unexpected mention of his name startled the shadow user enough to cause him to nearly fall out of his seat. He was barely able to right himself and preserve some of his dignity.

"Yeah?"

"The Hokage will see you now."

Muttering "troublesome" under his breath, the young Jonin heaved himself out of his chair and made his way to the heavy oaken door.

He could hear the faint sounds of laughter and lively conversation leaking out from the other side of the door. Seeing the knob turn, Shikamaru quickly stepped to the side to allow a pair of his colleagues who were exiting the office some room to pass.

"Oh hey Shikamaru-kun! I thought that you were on leave."

The shadow user gave his usual half-smile and shrugged half-heartedly.

"I was. But when duty calls, what're you gonna do?"

Stepping past the two exiting shinobi and into the Hokage's office, the smile on the shadow user's face faded into nothing; warmth and happiness giving way to cold neutrality. Shikamaru could practically see the easy atmosphere of camaraderie that had existed in the room a few seconds ago fading away upon his entrance. He stood and waited while Uzumaki Naruto, Seventh Hokage of the Village Hidden in the Leaves and reckoned by many to be the strongest ninja in the world, idly picked through a stack of papers.

Still in his early twenties, Naruto had assumed the office around a year ago. The stress of his position had not yet taken a visible toll on him yet and he was- for the most part- still filled with the boundless energy and optimism that had carried him through his years as a shinobi. His almost messianic status in Leaf Village and the universal respect given to his abilities in the ninja world had made him an obvious choice to assume the mantle of Hokage when the position became open after Kakashi had stepped down.

After nearly a minute of this, the shadow user cleared his throat and the blonde Hokage tore his gaze away from the documents and looked up, as if noticing Shikamaru for the first time.

"Shikamaru-san," the Hokage said shortly.

"Hokage-sama," the Jonin replied hollowly.

Shikamaru helped himself to a seat, sitting straight and rigid in the chair in contrast to his usual slouch. The two young men eyed each other, an uncertain air of wariness hanging between them. The uneasy silence was finally broken by Naruto.

"You're probably wondering why you're here."

'_Why my much deserved vacation was ruined? Gee, it hadn't even crossed my mind,_' Shikamaru thought snidely.

He made sure to keep the sentiment inside of his head. Despite the... _personal enmity_ that had developed between the two of them, Naruto was still his Hokage and Shikamaru had enough respect for the man and the office he held to not be blatantly disrespectful.

"I am," the shadow-user replied. "Whatever it is, it must be pretty important if you decided to call me in on this."

"It is. A few days ago, a Usagi family summon came limping through the main gates looking like he was about to fall over dead from exhaustion. He brought a report about one of our teams being down and dispersed in enemy territory and their need for immediate rescue."

Almost unconsciously, Shikamaru formed his hands into the sign that he usually assumed when he was recalling or analyzing information.

"Usagi family; those are the rabbits right? The one who has the contract with them is that kid…Umeko Udon, correct?"

The blonde Hokage nodded. "Yep; he was on a mission with Nagai Moegi, and Konohamaru. They were supposed to be returning from a mission through the Grass Country but apparently decided to take a detour."

"A detour through where," Shikamaru asked, not liking where this conversation was going.

"The Land of Rain."

The young Jonin groaned and buried his face in his palms. He was positive that this was somehow Konohamaru's fault; his late sensei's nephew had a bad habit of getting himself in scrapes. A glance across the Hokage's wide wooden desk showed Shikamaru that, for once, Naruto shared his sentiments; they both had experience with cleaning up the messes Konohamaru made.

"I'm not even going to ask what they were doing there," Shikamaru said in annoyance.

"It doesn't really matter at this point," Naruto said curtly, his own annoyance showing.

"According to the rabbit, Moegi has gotten a pretty bad injury and she and Udon have gone to ground somewhere. Konohamaru is MIA."

Shikamaru cursed under his breath. This was bad news. The young Jonin was already going over the prospective mission in his head; the risks involved, the unknown factors, the fallout from any screw-ups. This was definitely going to be a delicate operation- the Land of Rain was supposed to be off limits for shinobi from the Five Great Nations and Konoha had been _the_ main proponent for that policy. To be caught violating it…

Shikamaru turned away from that thought for the moment; it would only give him a headache.

"So we need to mount a rescue and recovery."

"Yeah, that's the primary objective. But there's something else."

Shikamaru quirked a curious eyebrow, and looked at Naruto suspiciously.

'_Something else?_'

Wordlessly, the blonde Hokage reached to one side of his desk and pulled open a drawer, pulling a nondescript manila envelope out. He slid the folder across the desk towards the Jonin. Shikamaru looked from the envelope to the Hokage; Naruto's previously neutral expression had turned unusually grim.

"Go ahead. Take a look," he said.

Curiosity stoked, the shadow user tore open the envelope; it was filled with grainy black and white photographs. He grimaced; the pictures were of some kind of facility that looked to be in the heart of extremely rough and swampy territory. Flipping through the photos, Shikamaru looked for something that was significant enough to place a haunted look on his leader's face. As he thumbed through the photos the Jonin noticed that the photographer's focus had shifted from taking pictures of the installation, to taking pictures of the personnel.

Passing his eyes over several random faces, Shikamaru almost missed it when he finally came across the thing that had put that look on Naruto's face. The shadow user froze, his whole body tensing up, his entire being rejecting the possibility of what he was seeing.

'…_Uchiha Sasuke..._'

He was supposed to be dead; he was dead! He examined the picture closely, trying to spot any differences, no matter how minute that would prove that the person in the picture wasn't who it looked like. Height, build, anything and everything! But, the harder he looked at the man in the picture, the more and more he looked like Sasuke. He was perfect, right down to the scars a Kyuubi fueled Naruto had torn into his face.

"You saw him," Naruto stated, perceiving the shock that flashed across the shadow-user's face.

"I couldn't believe it either."

"It's BS; it has to be," Shikamaru said firmly. "Where did these come from?"

"The Usagi that brought us the information about Konohamaru's team also had a capsule with a roll of microfilm in it. Apparently our team took it off of a dead Grass ninja."

Shifting his gaze away from Naruto and back down the mystery man in the picture- he refused to even entertain the possibility that it really was the last Uchiha- the young Jonin spoke his mind.

"This guy, whoever he is, is a fake."

"And I agree with you, but it's not like we can just write this off though," Naruto responded snappishly, his voice rising in volume.

Anything having to do with Sasuke was a sore spot with him and it showed. Seemingly realizing what he was doing, the Hokage calmed himself back down.

"Look, your main objective is to find Konohamaru, Moegi and Udon and get them the hell out of that country. While you're there, I want you to look into the situation in the Land of Rain, do some intelligence gathering so that we have a better perspective on what's going on in that country. And if you get an opportunity, look into this _other thing_," he motioned towards the picture of the Sasuke look alike, "while you're at it."

Shikamaru nodded; he was going to have a lot on his plate for this one. Still, there was one more question.

"What about my team for this?"

The blonde Hokage rolled his eyes in what might have been either bemusement or annoyance- Shikamaru couldn't tell which.

"C'mon, I still respect you enough to let you handle that yourself. I'll approve whoever you want."

* * *

"You see any sign of him over there…"

Konohamaru needed to scratch his nose. He couldn't, of course, no matter how much he wanted to.

"Nothing; we've been at this forever. I bet that Leaf ninja is long gone by now; why can't we just get out of here? We're liable to bushwacked by Redeemers if we keep this up…"

Just a tiny little scratch; that was really all that he needed. A quick flick of a nail across the tip of his nose and all would be right with the world. Scratching, however, would require moving and moving would spoil the genjustu that he was casting that made him look like a nondescript gnarled tree branch on a lonely gnarled tree standing in the middle of an abandoned field. Kurenai had taught him this technique; as far as genjutsu went, it was pretty advanced, able to withstand most of the usual methods of dispelling illusions and took up a relatively small amount of chakra.

Konohamaru had been using it- off and on- for the past four days. That was the reason why he kept focusing on the itch in his nose; it helped him forget that he was dangerously close to chakra exhaustion.

"We're never going to find him; let's just go back to the Sanctuary…"

The young Leaf ninja felt like crying tears of joy. Finally, those persistent bastards were giving up and going home. Most of the other teams of Loyalist ninja- he had heard them refer to themselves as such- had already given up the search for him and retreated back into the wilderness for whence they came after two days of fruitless searching. But this group of hard-asses had decided that it would be fun to try to stick it out and try to unearth him.

Less people looking for him should have meant that Konohamaru could have escaped at his leisure but this last team had done an incredibly good job of keeping him pinned in place. But it finally seemed that they had gotten fed up. When he was convinced that his pursuers had really and truly gone, the simian ninja let go of the tree branch that he was clutching and fell gracelessly to the ground. Landing on his feet, Konohamaru slapped himself hard across the face a few times, literally beating the fatigue out of his body.

Now that he was free of his pursuers, he had to find a place to hide himself while he recovered his chakra. After that, he could start searching for his teammates. Looking around the desolate and rainy landscape for some sign of shelter, the filthy young shinobi spotted a ramshackle farmhouse in the distance. He had just started making his way towards it when he was stopped in his tracks by an unfamiliar voice.

"You did well to avoid them kid. Those Loyalist assholes were stumped."

All around the young Leaf shinobi, men dressed in old-fashioned ninja garb began sprouting out of the ground like so many weeds. On their foreheads they wore an emblem that the young Leaf ninja had never seen before; a stylized raindrop. Even as his stomach did nervous flip-flops, Konohamaru felt like smacking himself in the head on more time in frustration. How had he not sensed them before? The last of the Sarutobi ninja was surprised he wasn't more worried; he must have been more tired than he thought.

"We've got no plans to kill you kid," one of the surrounding ninja said. "But you start giving us shit, you're dead, you follow?"

Without a word, Konohamaru raised his hands above his head.

He didn't give them any shit.


	5. Chapter 5

**Chapter 5**

_Shots_

Through the paper-thin walls of the beaten down shack, Shikamaru could hear the low rumble of a storm approaching on the horizon. Just what they needed; more rain. The young Jonin and his team had been in the Land of Rain for a few days and all of them were sick of it- well, everybody except Matsushita, but he was kind of a weirdo. They had arrived at the coordinates where Moegi and Udon were supposed to have been a few hours ago.

Their MIA comrades were still MIA.

Shikamaru had immediately split his team up; half to search the surrounding area to see if they could pick up any sign of where Moegi and Udon might have gone and kept the other half with him to examine the shack that stood nearby.

Upon entering they had noticed that there were no obvious signs of a struggle having taken place. It did however appear that whoever had been squatting there had left in a hurry. It didn't appear to be the "fleeing imminent death" degree of hurry, but it was clear that the occupants had been in a rush to get away. The young Jonin went over all of the possibilities of what that could indicate; few of the things that he thought of weren't very comforting.

He needed to settle his nerves.

Slipping a brand new pack of Pachinko Blacks out of their usual place in the left breast pocket of his shinobi vest, Shikamaru very carefully broke the seal. With the utmost caution, the shadow ninja extracted one of the small black cylinders and stuck it into his mouth. It took Shikamaru a few seconds of fumbling around underneath his parka before he finally wrapped his fingers around the cold iron of his lighter. He out pulled the small metal object; as far as lighters went, it was really top-class. Kurenai had given it to him when she had found out that Shikamaru had discovered the joys of nicotine dependency.

Lighter finally in hand, the young Jonin flipped open the top and watched the tiny orange flame flicker into life. He was just about to touch the light to the end of his cigarette when he was stopped in his tracks by the unnecessarily loud cough of one of his subordinates.

"Sir, what do you think you're doing?"

"…Well, I'm definitely not enjoying my smoke," Shikamaru said dryly.

The shadow user looked at the only other people in the room with annoyance. The Ohata twins, Ando and Ako, were looking at him with identical expressions of disapproval. They were members of the village's Torture and Interrogation Division and normally wouldn't have ventured too far outside of the village. Despite their lack of time in the field, Shikamaru had chosen them to be on his team because they possessed a particular skill set that he thought might prove useful in gathering information. He had expected two subordinates of Morino Ibiki to be a handful, but he hadn't expected them to be so insufferably annoying!

First of all, they were literally identical; from the long hair tied up in a severe bun, right down to the lip-gloss and the black eyeliner. It didn't help that their field gear helped to Ako's feminine curves so that the only way that Shikamaru was able to tell them apart was due to the _slightly_ deeper tone of the brother's voice.

"Sir, don't you remember what we told you about all of the health problems that can arise from smoking those filthy things," the disturbingly androgynous ladyboy chirped.

Shikamaru wanted to snap back with a snarky comment about how he couldn't forget because the two of them would never shut up about it; in the end, he decided to hold his tongue.

"Troublesome," he muttered before clicking close his lighter and slipping his cigarette behind his ear.

The shadow user felt cheated; he had been expecting the twins to be sadists. He had practice dealing with sadists. But militant non-smoker, cross-dressers…

After showing the twins that the offending cancer stick had been put away, Ando and Ako returned to the work which they had been doing before. Retreating to a corner, Shikamaru watched with mild interest as Ako pulled a kunai from a holster and sliced open both hers and her brother's hand. Separating from each other the brother and sister busied themselves by drawing intricate seals onto the floor between them. Almost unconsciously, the shadow user traced the bloody patterns with his eyes, vision cutting through the dim light of the room to follow the every twist and curve being drawn out.

Finishing up their seals, the twins dropped down onto their knees, bringing their faces uncomfortably- for Shikamaru- close together. As one, brother and sister lifted up their hands and cupped captured their counterpart's face in their hands; the shadow Jonin wondered what they were doing as they stayed locked in their odd embrace. Suddenly, Shikamaru quirked an eyebrow as a violent tremor went through Ando and the young man's body began convulsing violently, his sister's iron grip on his head the only thing keeping him from tumbling to the floor. Forcing down his natural urge to help- he had to assume that this was all part of the jutsu- the young Jonin stood rooted in place and forced himself to silently watch what happened next.

Shikamaru felt an infinitesimal spike in chakra at the very edge of his senses; it was all the warning he received. He watched in a strange mix of intrigue and disgust as Ako's throat began to slowly swell and distend until the kunoichi looked something remarkably like a bullfrog. Once the girl's throat reached the point where Shikamaru was sure that her windpipe would come tearing through her skin, she began leaking an inky white….something out of every orifice on her head.

The gunk that the kunoichi was currently spewing out was unlike anything that the Jonin commander had seen in his young life. It looked like a logic defying combination of woodsmoke and lumpy milk; solid and constantly in flux at the same time; plus, it gave off an unearthly smell. The mysterious substance hung in a swirling mass a few inches above head, clinging to the ceiling like a leech. Tearing his eyes away from the amazing regurgitated whatever-it-was long enough to check on the twins, Shikamaru bit his tongue in the midst of a surprised yelp as he saw what appeared to be Ako's mummified corpse kneeling on the floor, locked in embrace with her seemingly catatonic twin.

"Yep, this is definitely one of the weirder things I've seen."

The young Jonin barely had enough time to process this new shock before the floating white gunk suddenly began to descend and settle onto the ground. Shikamaru's skin crawled as the substance passed over him on its way to earth. No sooner had it settled on the floor, the mysterious substance began to warp and shift. Taking an uneasy step backwards into the wall, Shikamaru watched in blatant fascination as the mysterious miasma began to rise and condense, coming together until two humanoid figures arose from the ground.

Unable to hide his fascination, the typically jaded Jonin perked up from his place at the edge of the room. Shikamaru studied the two translucent figures; since they were slightly see-through, it was hard for him to make out their facial features. One was taller than the other and the Jonin could tell from the way that the apparitions held their bodies and moved amongst each other that they were ninja. Their body language also spoke to Shikamaru of their agitation.

A nervous energy radiated off of the murky figures and the shadow user zeroed in on the taller of the two. The ghostly presence was tapping one of its feet against the ground and was fidgeting incessantly. It appeared that the smaller one was mouthing words up towards the taller one; the astral bodies made no sounds so Shikamaru tried to reading their lips. He gave that up pretty quickly; it was hard to catch more than the odd word due to their translucent faces and he couldn't be sure if he was making out the right words anyway.

There was one thing that Shikamaru was sure about though; whoever these two were, they weren't his missing shinobi. The most obvious giveaway was the fact that both of the figures were blatantly masculine in their mannerisms; though the smaller one was about the same size as Moegi, the Jonin remembered the kunoichi to be much more feminine in her character.

Shikamaru's face assumed the scowl that he had gotten so used wearing over the years. These two weren't Moegi and Udon; so who the hell were they? More importantly, where were the two Leaf shinobi? This shack was their last known location and there were not many physical signs that a struggle had taken place, but the pair of Leaf shinobi wouldn't have pulled up and left their hiding place for no reason.

So wrapped up in his own thoughts, the shadow-user hardly noticed when the twins' jutsu faltered, the ephemeral astral bodies shimmering and breaking down their shape, becoming formless masses before dissipating completely. The mysterious substance quickly flooded back into Ako's desiccated husk, restoring her to full vitality and vigor.

"What were you able to get," Shikamaru asked without preamble.

"A word," Ako gasped.

"The same one, over and over," Ando interjected, "…redemption."

"Either of you have any idea of what _redemption_ is supposed to mean," Shikamaru asked.

"No idea," they both said at the same time.

"Okay. What about our two MIA shinobi; were you able to learn anything about what happened to them or where they went."

"I'm sorry to say that there was only the faintest trace of Udon-san and Moegi-san left in this place. All we can say is that they weren't killed here; if they had been, the impression they left would have been much deeper," Ako replied.

Shikamaru sighed in disappointment. He didn't know for sure if the missing duo were alive or dead; he'd just have to keep on working under the assumption that they were alive then. Then, of course, there was the issue of Konohamaru, who was still in the wind.

The young Jonin slipped his cigarette from behind his ear and back into his mouth and lit it. The twins wrinkled their noses in identical expressions of disgust but an authoritative look from their commander silenced whatever protest was bubbling up in their throats.

"Then who were those two ghost things I just saw?"

"They definitely weren't our missing children, but they were ninja," Ando said; Shikamaru nodded, having surmised the same things.

"And they were definitely locals."

"How can you tell that," Shikamaru asked at this new bit of information.

The twins exchanged a glance and shivered as if they had caught the same chill up their spines.

"This country's got this yucky aura to it; it sticks to everything like tar. Those two were covered in it," Ako said.

Shikamaru breathed out a stream of fragrant tobacco smoke into the air as his mind cycled through the information that he had just received. All in all he had found out much less than he had hoped he would; the whereabouts of Konohamaru, Moegi and Udon were still a mystery and he still didn't know if they were alive or dead. On the bright side, his team did have one thing…

'_Redemption'_

"Good work."

Taking a long drag on his cigarette, Shikamaru turned and walked out of the shack, the twins at his heals. He scowled when he saw that the rain had picked up; fortunately his hat gave him enough protection to keep is cigarette lit. Thank the gods for small favors.

Crossing the threshold the young Jonin swung his eyes around towards long-legged kunoichi whose face was just beginning to show the signs of middle age.

"Hey, Akeginu-san, is the search team back yet?"

The oldest member of their team peaked from under the wide brim of her hat and pointed out towards the ruins of some stables.

"They just got back, but by the way Inuzuka-chan was snarling, I don't think that it went so well."

Shikamaru shrugged as if to say, '_what else is new'_ and immediately began heading for the skeletal remains of the stable. The first thing that struck the young Jonin about the search party was the fact that they were absolutely filthy, all three- including Inuzuka Aoi's two dogs- were practically coated in the black and blue mud native to this part of the Rain country.

"Yo, Hinata-chan! Please tell me you've got some good news for me," the shadow-user said in a sarcastically plaintive tone.

"That depends on what you consider to be good news," the Hyuga heiress said.

She sounded pissed off; that was never a good sign.

"Trying to track somebody in a place where it rains as much as it does here is not exactly easy, but we managed to find traces of shinobi moving into and out of this area."

Shikamaru took a few puffs from his cigarette and let the smoke stream from out of his nostrils.

"So you found some trails; trails sound good. At least it's something; with that we can…"

Hinata held up a hand, stopping her commander from going any further.

"It is not so cut and dry. We did not just come upon one trail, we were able to locate and trace at least eight different routes that Moegi-san and Udon-san could have used to leave the area."

"Basic training dictates that when you're trying to evade a pursuer you leave false trails to lead them in a wrong direction," Aoi added.

"Any one of them could have been made by our guys to throw off any enemies pursuing them and then those enemies made more to throw off people like _us_. I got Kazemaru and Toboe," she indicated the two large dogs seated at her feet, "to try to catch a scent, but any trace of those two got washed away with the storms that're always happening in this place."

Shikamaru gave ground beneath his feet a hard stare. So, basically, they were telling him that they had come up empty. Things were not going the Leaf ninja's way.

The young Jonin's mind shifted into high gear as he began to shuffle the information that he had been taking in throughout that afternoon and analyzed it. As he considered his next move, Shikamaru was acutely aware of one factor above all others; time.

It had taken him several days to assemble his desired team and get them to the Land of Rain; he had hoped to simply make a quick trip to recover their wayward team and maybe do some light reconnaissance to glean some more information about that Sasuke imposter. Instead, he and his team had fallen into the worst case scenario. They had three MIA Leaf shinobi, plus they were in the middle of hostile territory- territory that they were, legally, not supposed to set foot on- teeming with unknown enemies.

They needed to find Konohamaru and the others as fast as possible and get out of this country as quickly as possible and then...

Shikamaru shook his head, banishing the thought

'_No… that's wrong. That's not the way.'_

Unconsciously, Shikamaru brought his hands together and closed his eyes in the now well known gesture that signified his retreat into deep contemplation.

He couldn't allow himself to become hurried or rush, couldn't allow himself to become impatient. While it was true that time was of the essence in this mission, he could not become reckless and endanger the lives of his subordinates in order to recover the missing shinobi. That wasn't how he fought; he needed a strategy. He couldn't take his time with this one, but if he could at least get a better grasp of the situation in this land then he could…

Suddenly, the idea popped into his head. He had a plan; he didn't consider it a particularly _good_ plan, but at the moment it was best of the roughly three dozen he had managed to think up. Opening his eyes, he looked at Hinata.

"How far is the nearest town from here?"


End file.
